


here your love has been

by parareve



Category: Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle
Genre: ... - Freeform, And makeouts, Battle wounds, Emotional Comfort, M/M, Oops?, Sexual Pining, UST, a hella lot of cursing, a hella lot of ust during wound treatment, a what-if: fai must come to terms with his affection very early on, all of the pining, and fai is a walking disaster, badass fai makes an appearance, bed sharing, get ready for steam, headcannon liberties are taken, i've been reading way too much beserk so this opens with some gore, kurogane is hot as hell, like dripping with ust, romantic pining, rondart is briefly mentioned (and dragged), so much UST, stay to find out after the break, swashbuckling sword battles, syaoran and sakura are teens being teens, those faint of blood should avoid this like the plague, vaguely set in jade country, will it go well?, wound treatment
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-24
Updated: 2019-05-24
Packaged: 2020-03-13 12:20:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,344
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18940825
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/parareve/pseuds/parareve
Summary: “Do you want me to stay?”It comes like the first crack of a storm, bark chipping to ash beneath the weight of it as the gleam of the fire before him whispers through the silence. But Kurogane lays the offer between them quietly, matter-of-fact—as if it’s something that shouldn’t require any thought; as if it’s nothing at all.Fai stares at him as though he’s dismantled Hell at his feet.





	here your love has been

**Author's Note:**

> i have arisen from the grave with the longest oneshot i have ever written. needless to say, it has been an adventure, and a blessed one.
> 
> /sidenote. just. read berserk. it is so good.

It’s not like him to get hit.

Not because he _can’t_ —more than one night of his youth had been spent thrown upon stone floors, brow tight and teeth gritting, with thin palms still cooling from the broken ring of violet light around them; instructed calmly to get back on his feet, by eyes deep as brewing thunder; to face his attacker, stand his ground, draw his runes of defense magic again.

Countless years had stained the taste of defeat and the dizzying headrush of success upon bloodied battlefields, and behind weathered maps, alike; every passing moon had taught him, no matter how bitterly, how to _survive_ —to whisper spells of old strong enough to carve flesh from bone; to twist the very dimensions around his finger, to pull the tide of a fight; to hide daggers beneath heavy cloaks, and bury them between heaving lungs, when the threat of death loomed close enough to leave his skin prickling.

He knows how descend into flames and rise again. How to stand upon a sea of blood, victorious.

Yet, he takes the hit.

Not because he _can_ (it’s not _like_ him)—but because there is snow beneath the slick of his boots, stained in ugly splatters of blood-brown where Sakura cowers (shoved sudden behind Syaoran’s back, his eyes terrified and young and _raw_ , and her own shaking breath masked beneath the firm steadiness of a curved knife clenched between her palm), and Kurogane has thrown Mokona from his shoulder, a bow which they had only recently bartered for clattered from his back as a poor excuse for a shield against the grit of a longsword buried within it.

“ _Stay back_ ,” he hisses, lips twitching to bare teeth in a snarl devilish as it is challenging as he throws his attacker from him. The swirl of his cloaks tear into a rippling surge around the bend of his arm, a fluid movement from jolting elbow to sweeping palm as he clacks an arrow from his shoulder, bowstring creaked taunt behind his ear. “Just guard the kid—”

It’s feathered spine blurs beneath the slack of his fingers, thudding clear to the sliver of linen that stands between leather breast plate and shoulder guard; the howl of their would-be assassin splits to a roar beneath the spray of his blood, and he, too, twists into a deadly dance with the prowl of his steps, gloved fingers jerking a dagger from belted thigh to drive forward with metal blinding.

Kurogane sees the blow before it lands, is already turning to bare wrist and bone as bow twists to drive down, but still, it is not quick enough—haunting as the strength that pumps through his veins, this attacker is quicker, and the blade is already thrown deceptive from one palm to the other, gleaming white where it sails upwards.

Fai takes the hit in a blur.

It’s a thoughtless movement, heel scraping down to push him forward, the curve of the bow’s nock driven bruisingly into the meat of his spine as he shoves Kurogane back with enough force to send him stumbling. The growl ripped from the man’s throat falters to stunned silence, and he can feel those eyes staring wide and burning upon his neck, breath hitched into a huff of something close enough to be his name. The blade slices through his linens in a clean stab, right between the ribs, and slicks out in bloodied speed to aim for his throat; it cuts through the curve of his forearm, instead, a shallow line snaked from wristbone to tendon, the soilish eyes beneath blown wide at the ice that greets them as pale fingers sail higher to tear rubied knife free.

It takes nothing for the sting of broken flesh to call upon adrenaline, for Fai to swing his own saber from gut to throat, ringing sharp against the desperate parry jerked high by their assassin’s tremoring shortsword; its blade is driven hard from gloved fingers to snow, the man spluttering beneath the slice of his flesh as his hand recoils. He can barely drag in his next breath before his voice is cut out an ugly choke, bled slow from the twist of steel deep beneath his diaphragm; blood coughs from his lips and rains upon his cheeks as he crumples to his knees, left to fall within a frozen grave.

His partner doesn’t get far, tense breath betraying him as a second assassin descends from the trees, with lean bow drawn steady to aim straight for the back of Kurogane’s skull. Fai sees the flicker of movement from his peripheral, steels his breath as his muscles move on their own; he crushes his heel upon the handle of his attacker’s fallen sword to send it skyward, grabbed by the blade to flip quick into his palm. Black lashes startle wide as it’s point whirls past his ear, quick enough to send the hair upon his nape rustling, the wet squelch of splitting flesh echoing sharp behind him.

Kurogane doesn’t have to spare a glance back to know the fool some yards away has collapsed upon himself in watery heaves, a sword through his throat; those eyes stay silent and still upon the splatter of red on a fair cheek, air frozen between his teeth.

Fai feels breath crawl back to him slowly. Blood beads off his saber where it hangs tense at his side, _pit-patting_ to soak the snow beneath.

It’s familiar, all of it: the scent, the cold; the panic of death, still hanging numb in his limbs. His vision is blurred, even as the air in his lungs ease.

It’s Sakura who runs to him first, not an ounce of shyness spared for the gleam of metal that drips red between his fingers; her hands flutter anxious around the stream of blood that pools into his palm, unable to do anything but voice the obvious as she gasps towards his wounds, questions frantically if he’s alright.

He nods, quietly. The sword is traded numbly into his left hand as he shakes the sting from his right, biting out a hiss at the knife of cold air against it.

“Do we—do we need a medic?” Syaoran blurts, goldish eyes blinking wide as he stumbles to his feet. “I can go get a medic—”

“Leave it.” Kurogane’s voice is steady as his frame as he turns to glance short through the foliage buried around them. “Faster we get back, faster we can treat it. Kid, those leaves over there—” The boy jerks into rapid motion, already taking off blind on the hunt. “Long ones, right _there_ ,” his elder calls sharply; Syaoran circles frantic with hands fluttered in anxious irritation, helpless in his blubberings, until descending with a huff to the cluster of frosted green at his feet. “By the roots—just a handful.”

Fai doesn’t need to turn to feel those eyes settle back on him, white and red swimming beneath his boots. He blinks hard, clenches the sword tighter within his palm.

“Can you walk?” The words come gruff, snow packed firm beneath the thump of Kurogane’s boots as he crosses to him. This close, Fai cannot ignore every pulse of his aura, cardamom and spice and burning blue rustling beneath the folds of his cloak ( _are you alright how did you do that why did you get hurt are you okay_ ), and he can do nothing but linger in the downpour of them, stomach knotted beneath the flutter of his breath.

(This man shouldn’t care. This man shouldn’t be asking questions at _all_ —)

“Yes,” Fai says mutely.

Syaoran slips back to his feet in a rush of clattering tins and broken snow, panting out a hoarse, “I got them!” before crunching back to the circlet of blood strewn through the clearing.

It’s an unvoiced push in direction when Kurogane tugs the roots from him, turns him by scrawny shoulder to nestle them under a pocket belted within their satchels. They set off quickly, ushered only by the nudge of a dark head, the boy’s eyes a constant flutter from ruddy brown and furrowed brow to land nervously on Fai’s own. Sakura stays at his side, bloody fingers held in a reassuring squeeze; she supports his weight, unasked, with as much strength as she can as they trudge on behind, Mokona curled tight to her shoulder with her own whimpering reassurances.

It’s nothing. He knows it’s nothing; the pinch between his ribs stings, knifing into every breath, every shift of spine with the roll of his steps—but it’s not an arrow through the shoulder, or the heart, or an artery.

He knows he’ll survive. But he says nothing, in the face of their anxious questionings; _feels_ nothing, even as hazel eyes land back on him for the third time.

He can only stare forward at the tension that carves through a sharp jaw, clenched firm through the back of cold-reddened ears; can do nothing but watch the tilt of broad shoulders, cloaked by the sweep of pitch velvet, unable to avoid staring into the flickering burn of blue beneath, heart thundering disobedient at the warmth that aura sings.

( _Are you okay?_ )

:|:

“Let me see it.”

The air sits cold between them, suffocating in its silence save the whisper of firelight. Fai pinches his fingertips together, a tense squeeze of bone-on-bone, mouth stubbornly still where he sits.

He had put up with their doting if only for the hope that it would leave him alone; that he could be ushered to his room with nervous questions and sweet reassurances, with all the trust that he could treat his wounds, himself.

He had wanted nothing to do with the man whose aura had never stopped calling to him; who, for all his own forceful distrust, had consumed his thoughts from the moment they had landed in front of the Witch; who had shut the door behind him without saying a word, not sparing him a glance as he dragged a chair in a careless screech of wood on stone to sit blatantly before him, head bent, eyes like a summer flame fixed firm to his own, arms strong as dragonscale braced across spread knees.

“Let me _see it_ ,” he demands again, quiet and gritting and with raven brows drawn tight. “You got yourself hurt because of me; least I can do is patch you up.”

Fai blinks at him, then. It’s strange, the thing that twists between his lungs.

His fingers twitch, one hand raising with hesitant ease, the other wincing to get there; he doesn’t look at the man as he plucks apart one fastening of his undershirt, and then the other, cheeks hollowed with the bite of his jaw as he bares the curves of collarbone, then sternum, puffing soft with his breath, then navel, stained linen left limp between the hover of his fingertips.

The flicker of firelight turns bloodish-brown to ember as it stutters over the dip in his neck. Fai freezes, fair lashes blinking fast when broad throat bobs in a swallow, slight enough to go near-unseen; the correction comes quick, eyes flicking sharp beneath dark lashes to his own, and the moment sits forgotten beneath the shift of his hands.

It’s a slow thing, impatient still, when his fingers tug the line of fabric farther to bare the blood that crusts between tensing ribs; Fai bites down a wince at the tear of cloth from skin, brows creasing tight and lips drawn thin, it’s sting enough to pull fingertips clawing as the heat of that gaze fixes upon him, calm as it is worrisome.

“You’re lucky,” Kurogane says, blunt in its heaviness, thumb nudging gently into pale skin to tug the depth of the wound into view. Fai’s lips twitch at a smile in place of a scowl, breath hissing out short and low.

“Say it like I’ve surprised you,” he whispers, and flashes his teeth, head tilted as his eyes chance upon his own. “I should be proud to have exceeded your expectations of me, Kuro-pon.”

The man says nothing, just bristles beneath the nickname, as he always does; dusk lips twitch and broad shoulders tighten, the gleam of frustration rustling still into earthen eyes even as his touch prods light around torn flesh.

“Any closer to your lung, and you’d be spitting blood,” he continues, tersely; for sake of routine, those eyes dart higher to fix upon him with a steelish glare, familiar in its sternness. “It’s Kuro _gane_ —”

“Of course, Kuro- _chi_ ,” Fai supplements, grinning just a tad too wicked when the fire is reignited again. The man before him huffs, the child shining through, eyes cut clean away; he gets up from his chair, grumbling nothings as he moves to rifle through the rucksacks Syaoran had given them.

Fai watches him through the shadows, the glow of the flamelight a beastly thing where it contorts the shape of him. He’s a towering man, in the dark, built from bones of steel and muscle of iron, carved into sweeping curves down shoulder, spine, thigh. Fai’s eyes stutter away, smile torn down with the ripple of his own throat. It’s not his place to look, even still—

( _Are you okay?_ )

“You shouldn’t’ve done it,” rumbles the man then, back still turned; impatient fingers clatter through a sea of stored bowls and tins to yank a shallow dish from their satchels, gleaming pearlish in the low light. He swipes up the wilting furl of leaves left upon the table, their foliage twisting into clean rips around the crease of his index finger, and crushes them into a neat roll between the points of his teeth. “Told you, I had it.”

Fai watches, idly, as the remainders of the root are worked between knuckle and palm, turned to a dripping mush of dark stalk.

“You would’ve had an arrow through your eyes, if I hadn’t,” he counters, quietly, smile spread clean the moment broad shoulders stiffen beneath dark cloth. Kurogane says nothing at that, jaw flexing from the jab or the bite around bunched leaves both; he adds the root, crunched mutely beneath the grind of his teeth as he spills the pail of boiling water Sakura had left into the dish, _fwipping_ a weathered rag upon his shoulder. Fai blinks at him from his chair, fingers tapping absent over wooden arms as that broad body turns to pace back to him, gaze fixed like a flame upon the sluggish bleed in his chest. Its warmth is enough to burn, tingling strangely up Fai’s arms to nestle against the back of his neck; he swallows, smiles, feigning nothing but passiveness as those hips creak back to chair before him.

“S’not what I mean,” Kurogane continues, mumbled over the crunch of wildroot between his teeth. He leans closer on his knees, steaming bowl cradled in one hand and cloth pressed down to soak within the other, squeezed tight into a dripping stream between calloused fingers. Fai watches each droplet of water as it _plips_ back to its surface, teeth clenching light beneath his cheeks as his eyes flicker, unnoticed, to watch the drag of one rogue drop down thumb and wrist, painting a gleaming line across the tendon that rises firm with the next squeeze of his palm. “You shouldn’t have done that, in front of them.”

Fai’s eyes jerk up to meet his own, stumbling through a caught breath as that cloth hovers in a wave of heat across tensing skin.

“The kids, you mean,” he breathes, fingers tightening across the ridge of wood beneath in anticipation of the sting.

“They expect that shit from _me_ ,” Kurogane continues, an unspoken answer. One calloused thumb balances on the flare of pale muscle as the cloth is pressed down, steam and wet and burning, and Fai sucks a hiss through his teeth when water scatters across tightened skin to sear through the open wound, calves jolting into a tight line. Ember eyes glance up at him through lashes dark as night, a sharp cheek flexing before he spits the chewed root into his palm. “Not from you.”

Fai’s eyes squeeze shut, any path for diversion a welcome one as his lips twitch, grinning small through the rattle of his breath.

“Critiquing my methods?” he says, a teasing hush as his brow pulls taunt through the itch of new-blood raising to the surface. Kurogane keeps the cloth held down on him, its heat a molten thing that pulls his skin shivering. “And here I thought you’d be impressed.”

“Knew I was travelling with a mage,” Kurogane retorts, wiping the gash clean in a streak of watery red. “Didn’t think that meant a seasoned killer.”

It’s as much complimenting as it is rooted in suspicion, and Fai falls silent beneath the muddled weight it carries, mouth frozen still. He swallows, tongue caught on the inside of his lip, as he watches the mush of chewed root be worked into a paste between steady fingers.

“That makes two of us, then,” he murmurs.

Kurogane’s eyes are slow to flicker to his own, dark hair rolling like lines of ink above his brow, before his gaze cuts down again, his thumb smearing a line of green over the cut. Its coolness is unexpected, heady with an herbal sting of mentha and vetiver that pulls Fai’s nose wrinkling.

“Your arm,” the man before him says, dusk lips twitching with the rustle of his throat as he clears it. Fai turns his wrist over obediently, linen sleeve splotched brown beneath the painted red of his palm; Kurogane _tsks_ at that, paste smeared into a thick blot across the dish’s lip as he clacks it to the crate beside them, moving to brace one hand around the twitch of Fai’s own. The other hovers, gentler, one calloused thumb pressing through the scuff of linen to provide a backbone for the curl of his fingers over the ridge of its cuff; his touch is light, a warm thing where it peels bloodied sleeve back in slow tugs.

Fai’s eyes wince shut, brows furling tight as the wound is exposed, the air sharp as a bandage removed. It cries through its reawakening slowly, a dullish sting where crimson beads through the sliver of cut flesh; Kurogane breathes out slow through the flare of his nostrils, dark brow drawn firm as he soaks the cloth again.

“Lucky here, too,” he mutters, slowly pressing dripping linen to cover stained skin. The rush of its heat falls liquid and heavy across forearm and palm, pattering into ruddy splatters upon the stones, and Fai clenches his toes within his boots, gaze torn away beneath the burn of it.

“It’s—funny you keep saying that,” he rasps, pinched tight between his breath. “ _Agh_ —”

“Hold still.”

It’s an impulse he can no longer control, letting his eyes flicker open to watch; they land on still jaw and iron-clad eyes, drawn sharp in their focus, and for a moment, Fai forgets the hitch in his breath entirely. It strikes him, then, how little he knows about this man—how many battles must be scarred upon his skin, for him to have treatments for wounds be so second-nature; how many he has fought for, and lost, in the name of some unspeakable goal; how many nights he may have laid alone, beneath the shelter of his tents or in untamed brush alike, with nothing but his own hands to sew himself together.

That twist nestles deeper into his chest, a jumble of stinging pain, and the burn of another thing, in itself, as he watches those fingers guide stained cloth meticulously, nudged through every crevasse of tense vein, tightened palm, bent finger.

“What’s funny about it?” Kurogane grumbles, and its abruptness sends Fai into a scrambled mental state, eyes staring frozen at the slow climb of auburn flame towards them. His mouth jerks at a smile, flippant through the nauseousness of it as the words spill out, rebellious in their transparency.

“Well, it’s…“luck” isn’t something I usually attribute to myself.” He tilts his head, caught distant upon the grouting of the stonework beneath them. “It’s funny.”

Kurogane turns slow back to the crescent of red that cuts through his forearm, the hand still braced about his own tilting it slow to let the press of his other thumb paint the paste down the line of it.

“Missed two things that could’ve been fatal,” he mutters, “If luck’s not the word for it, fine.” The heat of his palm shifts beneath Fai’s own, the ridges of callouses weathered by age and sword alike pulling his skin tremoring beneath the drag of it against his knuckles; his breath stills, blind to the way one thumb shifts to hover over the ridge of his forefinger. “You know how to use…”

The rustle of the firelight rattles within him, sudden in its loudness, its roar an endless thing that hits his thoughts like a train derailed. Fai blinks fast, gaze cutting swift to where the heat of another’s lingers; Kurogane’s brow is drawn tight, reddish eyes steady as knifepoints where they hover upon the valleys of scarred skin that line his fingertips, deep enough that even magespells could do little for them. It’s a knee-jerk reaction when Fai tugs his hand back, skin freed swift and sharp from the touch that hangs empty from it.

Kurogane says nothing, just lets his fingers curl closed, a slow thing as his eyes yank away.

“You’ll need to stay bandaged,” he mutters, after a pause; Fai watches with tensed jaw as the man stands, bloodied cloth wringed out and brownish water carried back to the table. “Leave the root on overnight. Should help’em close faster.”

He returns with a roll of linen, unraveled easily between still-wet fingers. Fai waits, lips twitching at a smile, as the chair creaks beneath the press of his weight for the third time. Kurogane pulls the gauze wide, tears it quick between his teeth, shearing out two long lines of it; stray strands spit from his tongue with a short puff before he works its end between one forefinger and thumb, the line of it smoothed between the other.

“Lift your arm,” he rumbles, and Fai does so, fair lashes blinking soft as the heat of those hands move to hover about his skin once more. Kurogane pushes the roll of his sleeve up farther, starts the spiral slowly, end folded neat beneath the circlet of it as it weaves down the flex of his bone, just long enough. The other end is tucked in tightly, knuckle smoothing out the bubble of it.

Fai hesitates, the span of a breath, before bloodish eyes flick back to his own, unspoken; he shifts his arm back enough for those hands to unfurl the next tape of gauze, starting slow at his side where their touch hovers beneath the drape of warm linen.

There’s nothing he can look at save the man before him, throat abruptly turned to sand and skin shiverish. Fai swallows, breath stilling beneath the swell of his breast as those hands curve closer, elbows dug into parting knees and broad chest angled further; this close, he can count every midnight lash that blinks with steady concentration upon him, can see every shift of muscle beneath dark cloth as those shoulders roll with the circle of his arms, his touch steady as it is methodological as the gauze is pulled beneath the rasp of his shirt, one hand to the other, to be carried gentle across the curve of his ribs, thumb a burning line where it guides slow for evenness to smooth across the stutter of bare spine.

For the span of one frozen breath, Fai wonders if the pound of his heart may betray him as those fingers trade off, pulling back to front to start the slow trek up towards it, rough and warm and light all at once; they curve about the angle of his clavicle, smooth beneath the droop of his shirt to follow the arc of his shoulder, carried soft by waiting hand beneath to guide down the curve of his back, and Fai stares firm at the ridge of one broad knee before him, willing with everything in his being for the flutter in his lungs to stay unvoiced.

It’s with one silent breath that Kurogane tucks the end between the corners where rib and shoulder-band intersect, and for the heartbeat that the heat of his touch lingers—soft, slipped slow from beneath the lattice of his bandaging, ruddy eyes flicking quick to hover about rising sternum before they stutter back down—Fai feels his pulse fall numb entirely.

“That should do it,” huffs Kurogane, sitting back with palms clapping loose to spread thighs. “Just don’t…move around too much; should stay put through the night, at least.”

It feels worlds away when speech comes back to him, Fai’s throat bobbing hard and lashes blinking fast. He pulls his lips into a grin, the closest defense he can manage with his skin still tingling.

“I’m sure I’m _quite_ capable of handling that,” he muses. “You’ve done plenty, Kuro-soft.”

Ruddy eyes knock back into a quick roll as Kurogane pushes himself to his feet, hands swinging fisted to his sides and chair squeaked back.

“Don’t _call_ me that—”

“Kuro-san,” Fai corrects then, softly, and is unable to help the odd thrill that peters down his spine as those shoulders draw rigid from something else entirely. Long strides falter mid-step, head tilting just enough—but the man across from him gathers composure easily, dirtied water dumped to a wooden pail at his feet and rucksacks clattered closed. A breath sits, caught in his throat as fingers yank leathered pockets shut, and huffs into one dismissive and quiet.

“Well, you…you know where to find me, if you do somethin’ stupid to it.”

It’s a simple thing, Fai knows, but enough to send his thoughts derailing.

( _Where to find me_.)

“Of course,” he says, after a pause. The words sound as numb on his tongue as he feels.

Kurogane reaches up one broad hand, scrubs it over the back of his neck; Fai watches as those eyes swing across the room, landing quick upon his own, before being torn back to the table, and the man turns without another word for the doorway, the jingle of its metal squeaking cold beneath his hand.

“Get some sleep,” he says, and doesn’t spare a second glance. The door tugs quick and quiet behind him, and Fai stares into the empty space that he leaves behind, the loss of his presence suffocating in its stillness.

He breathes into the flickered light, ears ringing in their deafness. His bandaged arm flinches, fingers twitching slow into motion before landing in a tumbling flutter, like butterfly’s wings against the pallor of his skin.

( _He can’t he can’t he can’t he can’t_.)

It’s nothing like it—nothing like the heat of that gaze, the roughness of that feather-light touch.

Fai knows he can’t give in to it (it’s nothing, it’s _nothing_ ).

But all it takes is a stuttering breath, eyes flicking wide to the door left shut, and he is consumed.

:|:

He dreams of snow. Even in sleep, the cold of it stings his lungs.

Green and black and white and red blur beneath the flicker of his lashes, midnight-moon and mountain musk, a castle with wings of crystal. Its stairs scuff and crack like old bone and soak up crimson like parched sand. Black silk flows over a gaunt face, and he stares, frozen, at eyes warm and distant and strange as a summer storm.

Nostalgia weathers away at him for another time, when the sun rolled low into new-green valleys and boxwoods hung fragrant upon the eaves; when a golden scepter sang with the power of raw fluorite, its wings spread wide beneath the grip of hands too small.

Before, he had felt hope. He’d buried into the name _Father_.

Now he dreads the shiver of _demon_ , feels his fate squeeze upon his throat in a drowning abyss of black and blood ( _this was your doing_ ), and he can’t—he _can’t_ —

“Get _up_.”

Fai’s eyes snap open, breath rattling harsh into his chest. Its too dark to see just yet, but the squeeze upon his shoulder is familiar, even if the hand that lays over his linens stays hidden beneath the shadow.

He sees red and brown, turned to shades of ash beneath the dim light. There’s a squint in flickering ember, a pinch between black brows.

“We’re leaving,” the voice continues, and even through the husk of sleep, its warmth stings with something visceral; it washes down Fai’s shoulders and pulls his lashes closed, breath hissing slow between his lips into something close to calm, again.

“Okay,” he rasps. His fingers tingle numb as he digs them to his eyes, huffs a silent breath between the slits of them. He feels the presence of the man before him linger, an odd weight of hesitating steps and steady breath, before broad shoulder turns through the dark, back to the doorway.

“Don’t keep us waiting,” Kurogane grumbles, its meaning coming clear even through the grit in it ( _we won’t leave without you_ ), and Fai blinks into the dark as light cuts into a strip of flickering gold from the doorway, night-black hair and sharp jaw and bare skin and dark cloth tied high upon his waist.

The door rattles shut. The heat is stolen with him.

It doesn’t take him long to get dressed, fumbling as his fingers are. His thoughts scatter, disobedient, through the whole of it, throat turned dry beneath the sting in his skin.

It’s threatening, and worrysome, and a burning ache between his lungs, how the sensation of care so easily sends him tumbling.

He tries to forget it as he snaps his trousers closed, shoves the tails of his shirt beneath the lip of them, bites out a hitch in breath through the tug on split skin. The dull ache of it persists even as he tugs on his overcoat, laces up weathered boots. By the time he creaks down the stairs of their inn, its spilled into a stinging roar.

Syaoran waits by the door, pacing in an anxious mess. On his back rattle the knottings of their tins and cookware, bartered quickly the day before in preparation for any stranding caused by passing storms. The princess flusters beside the boy, looking as frustrated as she does withdrawn, and when her eyes land upon the raise of Fai’s own, they flicker, quick as spritefire, from dulled emerald to vibrant jade, her hands jolting on their own accord to meet his.

“How are you feeling?” she gasps, without any other room for introduction; it pulls a smile twitching on Fai’s lips despite the wince that betrays him, her directness a fond characteristic of her, still.

“Doing better,” he says, and offers a reassuring pat when her brow twitches in suspicion. His eyes land on Syaoran then, and do not stray, the boy a storm of short breath and whispered mutterings, hazel eyes flicking quick from doorway to window to floorboard.

The linger of his gaze sends Sakura twisting back, as well, mouth pinched and cinnamon hair bouncing into a flutter upon her cheeks. Fai glances down at her, taking in every detail of downward-jolting eyes, tense shoulder, slow breath. Her knuckles clench thin to white points beneath the drape of her sleeves, and an explanation bubbles from her, unprompted, spilling out as though waiting to overflow for hours.

“He’s been up all night,” she whispers, “He didn’t want to bother anyone, but I just—I can’t _talk_ to him.” A thousand meanings pour behind a secret unearthed, and Fai stands in silence as she looks away, pulls her jaw tighter. “I feel like I barely even _know_ him,” she babbles on, “But just—the way he looks at me sometimes, I feel so _helpless_.”

He’s wondered about it often, how it must feel to exist with an identity lost (though, in his own twisted way, he _knows_ )—but to see it, now, hushed into a corner, like an act of trust breached, pulls at a heartstring far too close to something long lost within him.

“I’m sorry,” Sakura blurts then, and the timidness of it does something aching and strange to him, as though a sign of an old strength stripped. “I know—I know it doesn’t make sense, but—”

“It makes sense,” Fai says, quietly. He smiles, then—a bit too genuine, perhaps, where it sits muted and off-kilter—but it’s enough, and that’s all he needs; she blinks owlish upon him, abruptly silent, and then looks down, smiling small back, unspoken in her thanks.

“Can we go now?” huffs Syaoran, voice quiet save its urgency, and Kurogane gives a passive grunt as he stands from his seat with arms uncrossing. His cloak is tugged shut, the rucksack at his feet slung quick upon one broad shoulder, and he nods towards the door in a voiceless demand for everyone to follow suit. Sakura peeps to alertness immediately, tying her velvet bonnet quick beneath her chin and stooping down to grab her own bag, a collection of herbs and medicines that she had taken up some weeks ago.

“Don’t leave without Mokona!” squeals a shrill voice, and Fai has to cling to the banister for balance against the tornado of white that clatters down the stairs and leaps for the doorway, shocking into a startled squeak as she is caught against the squeeze of a tanned palm. The frustration heaves off broad shoulders like steam from a spring; Kurogane sends his head rolling back in exasperation, twin flames cutting quick to the ears that spring upright with paws squirming.

“Wahwah _wah_ —!”

“I _told’ja_ ,” growls Kurogane, and adds an extra pulse of tightened palm with teeth flashing. “To be back here five minutes ago—”

“Mokona just wanted snacks!” the little creature whines, puffing out a petulant sneer as Sakura tiptoes past the two of them, wide eyes nervously flicking forward. “Mokona didn’t know wanting snacks was a _crime_ —Kuro-mean is treating Mokona so _unfair_ , we need a lawyer!”

“Tche.” Kurogane pops open his palm dismissively, eyes cutting away. “I’ll give you unfair, pipsqueak.”

“ _Pipsqueak_?!” Mokona shrieks, aghast, and bounds upon the curve of his shoulder with white paw poking firm into the side of his jaw. “Mokona’s name is _Mokona_ , not _pipsqueak_ —”

“Let’s _go_ ,” groans Syaoran, some ways outside already, and the little creature grumbles into silence as Kurogane tugs the folds of his cloak around her.

“We’re comin’, we’re comin’,” he snaps. It’s only after he has stepped out a few good paces into the wilderness that he turns to glance back over his shoulder, and Fai starts, feet carrying him quick as they can, the door clinging shut behind him as he crunches into the dark.

Syaoran leads the band of them with a single gas lamp and a quivering charcoal-scrawled map, stubborn in his resoluteness as he carves a path for them all. Sakura lingers still behind him, a silent supporter, though Fai sees still the air of powerlessness that tightens her spine. Beneath the hush of snowfall, he treds through the shadows that Kurogane’s steps cast. Mokona’s self-murmurings form a blanket of white noise through the quiet of death that chills around him, the shadows of bare branches a twisting, ghoulish thing as they leave the outskirts of town onto the valley footpath beyond; he burrows into his thoughts long enough that he becomes lost in them, desperate for a diversion from the cold, from the slip and grit of white beneath his feet, from the ghost of gray-green eyes that burn beneath his lids—and he cannot remember when, or how, the velvet cloak tipped with ice, or the long pace of black boots beneath, moved from before him to beside, only that his breath is stripped away the moment he notices, steps faltering beneath the quiver of it.

He falls back into line quickly, because he has no other choice. It does nothing to ease the itch that returns between his lungs.

“How’s your wounds?” Kurogane asks then, quiet, and whether its been an eternity or a moment, Fai can’t tell.

“Fine,” he sighs, and the heat of it pours into a stream thin and white above him. He pulls in a breath through his nose, blinks silent at the trail that lingers before them.

“You got guts, to call a stab through the ribs fine,” Kurogane mutters, and then says nothing else. Fai looks on with brow twitching, unable to help the fluster of bemusement that pulls his lip curling at one side—every conversation with this man continues to throw him off-balance, forced to sift through countless layers of cryptic insults and compliments, as though one cannot exist without the other. He hesitates before chancing a look beneath the sway of his fringe, midnight-black casting shadows upon tanned cheeks where they blink against the snowfall. The man is nothing but sharp lines: ears, cheeks, jaw, shoulder; yet a softness lingers, faint as the snow that clings to his lashes, beneath the steadiness of that gaze, the curves of dusk lips.

Fai looks away, throat unwelcomely tight.

“Is…Syaoran alright?” he says, and swallows, “Sakura-chan was worried about him.”

“Kid’s been on edge for days,” Kurogane seethes, “Serves him right, trying to solve everyone’s problems. I don’t get why he puts it on himself to do it. Getting attacked just added to it.”

“I know he wasn’t getting much sleep over these vanishing children,” Fai continues, and Kurogane scoffs beneath his breath.

“Hasn’t slept at _all_. I finally got it into him to lay down, for once. He’s convinced Rondart’s behind all of it; thinks he’s the one that sent those bastards after us, too.”

Fai blinks at that, his brow furrowing. “You think he’s right?”

“’Course the bastard did it. Suspected the creep from the start." There's a lingering sharpness that pulls bloody eyes narrowing, a clench of muscle around sharp jaw. "You get strangers being friendly out of nowhere, they don’t want you sticking your nose into their shit. The kid decided to figure that out on his own; now he’s paranoid it’ll happen again.”

“Well, it could,” Fai murmurs.

“They’d be dead before they tried.” The man beside him rolls out his shoulders, breath sighing into a curl of white smoke above him. “Dragging us through this bureaucratic bullshit—fuckin’ obnoxious. I’d love to rip the stupid glasses off that bastard’s face, just to cut him a new look.”

It’s an abrupt thing, when Fai chokes on a laugh that builds sudden and snorting from his throat, his head twisted away to hide the exasperated grin that unfolds.

“What?” Kurogane sneers, and quirks a brow at him.

“Nothing, nothing,” Fai chortles, and drags in a wheezing breath, “Just—it’s _very_ easy to picture that.”

Dusk lips tug at something just slightly crooked as Kurogane tilts his head.

“I mean—nice scar, right here,” he prods on, and traces a pointedly obscene image upon his own forehead. Fai muffles his next outburst of laughter into his knuckles. “He needs something fitting—gotta strip that self-righteousness down a few pegs.” Fai feels his cheeks sting as he shakes his head, choking on a dampened cackle. “Or, y’know,” Kurogane continues, and draws an awful rendition of a mustache over himself. “Something to fuck up that pretty face—”

“Gods, _stop_ —” Fai gasps, and covers his eyes beneath the press of his palm, chuckling still through rattling breath. He’s answered with a snort, and nothing else, the quiet an endless thing as he rebuilds his composure piece by piece. Fai shakes his head, smile hanging wide in its incredulousness as he spares a glance back to broad shoulders and tilted head, before it stumbles upon the line creased around a smirk warm as dragonflame, heart ripped sudden to stillness at the sight of it.

“Didn’t think you’d be one for that kinda humor,” Kurogane mutters, after a pause, and Fai can do nothing but look forward as he feels the heat of that gaze land on him, only long as a breath. He swallows, smile frozen upon his face.

“And here I didn’t think you could take a joke,” he counters, and cracks a taunting grin towards him, relentless to the thrill of pride that tingles in his spine as that smirk drops, instantly washed to a glower broodish as it is youthful. Fai glances back to their path, triumphant, yet only lasts a heartbeat before being trapped beneath the itch to look again; nothing prepares him for seeing that smirk again—turned away, dimpled, softer—and he’s left in numb silence as his steps trod on, his pulse torn three worlds away from him.

“Kurogane-san!” comes Syaoran’s voice, muddled through the hiss of snowfall, and their beacon swings quick from the path beyond to paint them in a blinding pierce of gold. “I think a storm’s coming in!”

Fai can see the lingering dryness that still pulls that dark jaw shifting, even as brows draw low and eyes sharpen on the line ahead, a tease unvoiced through the need for direction ( _We’ve been walkin’ in it for a while, brat_ )—Kurogane takes the reigns nonetheless, a seamless shift as his boots trudge through the snow to close the distance between the two smaller bundles ahead, and Fai, unasked, hurries to stay close, as though yanked by an invisible thread. The man looms above the two children, a hulking figure of windswept cloak and ravenquilled hair, but they hang upon his every grumble, no heed of mind paid for the tower of his figure or the gruffness of his voice; long had the image of _threat_ and _warrior_ been abandoned for _leader_ and _protector_ —and, increasingly, _Father_ —and it’s a sight that places an odd ache into Fai’s chest, one that has nothing to do with the one between his ribs.

The panic of being stranded is remolded easily into motivation to keep moving; they all tred through the storm, the great shadow of Kurogane’s cloak leading them. The map and lamp is traded quick to Sakura, with Syaoran commanded to grab any fallen branches he sees; his collection of firewood grows steady into a scraggling heap between his wobbling arms, turning him bearded and dwarfish through the storm.

The snowfall grows blotted and thick enough that they nearly miss the shadow of an abandoned cottage tucked behind the trees, but the nudge of a dark hand sends the children swerving quick enough. Even the smallest glimpse at salvation strips all worries from them both—Syaoran takes off like a puppy unleased, branches rattling between his arms, crying out in their victory, and Kurogane shouts after him before slumping into muddled grumbling as Sakura, too, sprints after him.

Fai can’t help laughing at it all, warm as the relief that unfurls within his own chest is. He starts to bend down to collect the branches thrown aside in the boy’s haste, only to turn rigid beneath the weight of a large palm that sends his head buoying.

“I got it,” murmurs Kurogane, and kicks up the branch at their feet. “Go on ahead.”

It shouldn’t mean anything, simple as it is; yet the aura that bleeds beneath, unvoiced, even as that back turns without a glance, settles itself tight between Fai’s lungs as he blinks upon the windswept curl of a cloak dark as midnight.

( _You belong with them_.)

He can’t find any reason to say no—it’s not the time, not the place (it never _will_ be)—so he does as he’s commanded, with nothing but a stumble of a nod, heart in his throat.

:|:

Sakura and Syaoran are already sorting through their tins by the time he crosses the threshold, their rucksacks spilled out into a vine of dried meats and cloth-wrapped rice. It’s a small space, only two rooms, stone-walled and stone-floored and crumbling-roofed where the whispers of drafts sneak through. It’s shelter, though, and that’s enough.

Fai squats down beside them, with only a small grunt for the tug on burning skin, offering a patient smile as Sakura fumbles through her collection of medicinal herbs and jarred goods.

“I have— _oh_ , I know I have it somewhere—” she mutters, mostly to herself, her face scrunching into a troubled scowl. “I know you must be in pain, I have—I’ve forgotten what it’s called, I wrote it in my journal, but if you chew on it, it should help—”

“Really, I’m fine,” Fai says quietly, “But thank you, Sakura-chan—”

“Are you sure—?”

“We must be somewhere around here,” cuts in Syaoran, more self-addressed than anything, its hush scattered through the crinkling of his map being spread flat. Sakura shoots the boy a fiery glare at his interruption, unseen, as he scatters a finger along a scrawl of charcoal pathways. “So, in the morning, we’ll have to set out this way—”

“Won’t know if we can travel, until this storm passes,” comes a rumbling voice, and the door clatters shut behind the stoop of a snowy hood, a bundle of firewood held loose between the crook of one arm. Kurogane draws the folds of his cloak down, bearing a squirm a white that bounds into flapping ears and jingling jewel as Mokona leaps from his shoulder, shaking herself free of the frost upon her face with a high blubber. “So don’t even bother worryin’ over that.”

The boy casts a startled look upon him, perked to alert against the scolding that comes, soft as a morning tide. He scowls then, childish, flickered beneath the firelight of the lamp beside him; the map is wrinkled back into its roll, stuffed nosily between the clasps of his satchel.

“Do you think it will stop by morning?” murmurs Sakura, dutifully dragging away her mountain of unpacked tins and jars to make room for the rattle of branches that fall into a clattering heap before her. Kurogane only shrugs, stooping down quick to snap lean bark into smaller twigs; Fai stiffens at the first splitting crack, its sound coming swift through the quiet, eyes yanked down disobedient to linger over the twist of tightened knuckle and firm palm.

“Kid—” Kurogane starts, and the boy, without needing a second word, moves like lightning to dig through their rucksacks, leaving dark brows low and ruddish eyes blinking dumfounded as a cube of flint is thrown quick from the folds of weathered leather. His elder catches it without having to look, mouth twitching oddly, and turns back to their firewood, a hesitant breath before his throat is cleared. He pulls a dagger from the lip of his boot, struck quick against the ridges to send sparks flying; it only takes two tries before a flame is lit, and he nurtures it slow with a poke of curved steel and a sigh of low breath, it’s heat built slow between them all.

Syaoran is the first to pull boots unlaced and rustle through cloth bags of dried meat, gnawing slow on his own sliver. The boy takes little time to retreat into his journals, his shadow a wavering mountain as he slumps against his pack, and the girl, similarly, passes off the bag after toying at her own piece, doubled upon her sketchbooks as she sorts through her assortment of dried blooms.

In the quiet, the man scuffs to rest upon folded legs, tears off his own strip of venison to muddle between his teeth. Fai watches, half-hidden, as cloak is loosened and raven hair is palmed to fall damp and thin between the drag of heavy fingers, his lashes skittering sharp away at the tingle of memory even the sight leaves. The bag is slumped before his knee long after his mind has enough sense to right itself, and he snaps off his own piece of meat slowly, glancing up upon eyes that flicker, heedless, again the firelight, then down.

It’s Mokona who breaks the silence, voice coming shrill as she paws impatiently for her own snack, the largest chunk taken of them all.

“We should tell _stories_ ,” she crows, animated through the husk of her singsonged voice. Kurogane shoots her a quick scoff, crunching slow around his bite of meat.

“Stories?” he mumbles, flatly.

“Mokona wants to hear!” the little creature presses on, and wags a paw vaguely within the direction of the two children wrapped within themselves. “Syao-kun, Saku-chan, tell your stories!”

Syaoran casts her a petulant stare, looking as insulted as a poet forced out on a sunny day, his charcoal stilled mid-stroke upon his page.

“What of?” he says, and then perks up immediately, the change so quick that Fai is dizzied beneath the jolt in his posture, the gleam of his eyes, “Legends? Folktales? There’s a story about the creator of this world, I overheard it in town the other morning, a woodland goddess they called ‘Mother’—”

“ _No_ , no, no,” Mokona cries, “Tell Mokona about the Syao-kun's country! Mokona has never been to a place like that before!”

“Oh, Clow?” Sakura says, and smiles, a glint of reverie already sparking upon her freckled cheeks. “It’s a beautiful country. There are festivals every spring, and markets year-round, and the desert blooms are so bright at the end of summer—”

“Red, and orange,” Syaoran tacks in, the quirk of his smile warm with its own homesickness as he looks off upon the dance of flamelight, “After every first rain, they would always be hung from the eaves, to celebrate the change of the seasons. It doesn't have too many traditions like that, though; it's a young country, started by the King—”

“Your father?” Mokona gasps, leaning towards the princess with delight, and Sakura giggles soft and sweet, pressing herself upright.

“Yes, my father.”

“What about Kuro-pon?” the little creature continues, ears fluffed to alert as she turns to face the shadow that sits before her. The man just huffs, slow through his nose, dark brows drawing low.

“What about it?”

“ _Well_ , what’s Kuro-pon’s world like?”

Kurogane looks upon the fire, an twitch furrowing his temple, then dimpling the side of his mouth. He blinks, takes in a slow breath, slides it out steady between his lips.

“I grew up in the mountains,” he says, palms braced upon his arms. “In a valley province. Rice fields, tall grasses. There were forests just above us, climbing up towards the peaks. Spent most of my summers there.”

“Pretty fairy forests, or dark scary forests?” sings Mokona, lilting animatedly as she peeps closer. She’s cast a dull look, dusk lips twitching again at something closer to a smile.

“Green,” he mutters, quiet in its correction, “Dense, and old. Wasn’t the same, at the palace, but the mountains there were close. They weren’t as…wild. Lots of paths already carved through them, you know; hard to be alone, once you got in’em.”

“Mokona _hates_ being alone,” chirps a whining response, and Kurogane rolls his eyes, a dry chuckle huffed through his teeth. “It’s _always_ lonely without someone—Mokona would rather have lots and lots and _lots_ of people nearby!”

“And I’m sure you always have,” murmurs Fai, smiling sweetly upon her.

“What about Fai-san?” Mokona says, squeaking to face him with eyes wide in wonder. “Mokona wants to know _all_ about Fai-san’s world!”

The smile stays frozen, even as his blood runs cold. A thousand images spill behind a thousand lies, their weight shackling upon his throat tight enough to send his vision blurring. He swallows, a slow thing. He tries not to notice the flick of bloodish eyes towards him.

“It’s like this one,” he says, and chuckles, because the admission cuts too deep to do anything else. His eyes flutter down, and then away, thumb teasing against the ridge of his knee. “Um…lots of snow. Lots of…lots of mountains, and hills…and when dawn would come over the horizon, it…it would cast this glow deep into the valley, glittering across the rooftops…like a new sun.” He smiles a little, its bitterness brittle in its warmth. “Every year, we would have a festival for Midsummer. They’d always bring in the new harvest, and hang branches high into the rafters, with silken ribbon, and magelight…and the hall would have this…smell that would linger, for nights after, of roasted meats, and stews, and pine, and…” He turns his head down, throat cleared slow. “…lilies, too, strung by the doors.”

The tingle of eyes on him sends a shudder down his spine, his head turning to cast his gaze quick across golden and green, lingering wide and soft upon him, and blinking black, and bloody-brown. He swallows, looking quick to his heels.

“A-Anyway, that was a long time ago,” he says, and laughs, its nervousness betraying him.

“Oh, but that sounds beautiful,” whispers Sakura, and smiles warmly upon him. “It makes me think of our Moonday festivals.”

“I miss those." Syaoran lays into a little grin, lashes blinking sleepily as he scribbles slow along a building sketch.

“Me too." The girl beside him hums, thoughtful, and then yawns, hands coming to shield her face through the shake of it.

The firelight crackles slow upon them all, and it’s only after some pause that Kurogane pushes himself to his feet, voice rumbling quiet through the rustle of his lungs.

“You should sleep,” he says. It’s a soft thing, instructed to them all, but Fai feels its meaning slither deep beneath his skin as those eyes flick from stone floor to his own. “How’s your wounds?” Kurogane asks then, again, though the implication of a needed cleansing and redressing fill the void of any response he could give, unspoken in the rapid flutter of fair lashes and the stillness of thin mouth. Kurogane presses a _Tche_ between his teeth, moves silent through their scattering of belongings around the two half-awake children; gauze and stained cloth and waterskin and gaslamp are carried between the crooks of his fingers, and he nudges his head forward, leads the way unasked towards the darkened eaves of the second room. Fai can only waver behind the sweep of his cloak, throat too tight to say a word.

(It shouldn’t _matter_. None of it should—)

“You coming?” Kurogane grumbles. He only has to send dark-lashed eyes over his shoulder once.

:|:

The flicker of the gaslamp casts a shadow twisting as it is soft upon the ridges of raven brow and sharp cheek as its clacked to the tableside. Even buried beneath his own cloaks, the coldness of the room pulls Fai’s skin crawling, the dread for any layers soon to be shed knotting tight beneath the tenseness of his breath.

“Any better?” mutters Kurogane, half-focused in its mumbling as he scours the shadows for anything that could be made useful; the effort’s a fruitless one, the room long since abandoned, only a dried-out mantle and a sculpture of emptied crates filling the space between a single stool and a coverless straw bed. A string of curses grubble out from clenching teeth as their makeshift workspace is crafted by the clatter of one box and a quick drag of the stool, his shoulders pitching high at its screech as bloodish eyes dart towards the open doorway. Fai watches, mouth curling bemusedly, as huffing breath turns to stalking steps, the door carefully and quietly creaked shut.

“Well?” comes that gruff voice again, and Fai starts, hands fidgeting within his pockets.

“Y-Yes, they’re better,” he says, smiling small as cloak laces are tugged fully free and velvet is slung into a half-aimed heap upon the remaining crates, baring unbuttoned collar and skin dark as caramel. He has to force down a swallow, eyes jerking quick upon narrowed ember.

“You’re sure?” rumbles Kurogane, hands bracing firm to broad hips.

“Better than they were,” Fai supplements. The man before him prods out his jaw, brow furrowing slight.

“Sit down,” he huffs, the answer taken fair enough; calloused fingers work the heavy rolls of his sleeves from wrist to forearm, stuck firm behind the ridge of muscle to stay put as his feet carry him forward, and Fai is halfway to lowering himself upon the crate when one dark hand swats out to nudge him in a stumbling swerve onto the stool instead, clumsy and quick as a puppet cut from a string.

“I’d trust you to do this yourself, if you didn’t have your arm fucked up,” Kurogane continues, clunking down to the crate with a puff of breath.

“At least you trust me in _something_ ,” laughs Fai, and without heed for the slow raise of bloodish eyes, fair hands reach quick to free his own neck from the laces of his cloak. The sweep of its velvet puddles from his back to the floor beneath, and he moves towards the clasps of his collar in forced fluidity, desperate for any diversion from the tremor in his fingers at the way that gaze stays on him, a dragon peering from a cave, hot as a flame.

( _I don’t trust you_.)

The swat of a rough hand comes again when the wince of his mouth is caught; Kurogane says nothing, just works his collar open himself, knuckles twisting steady and slow, and then the clasp beneath, and the next. Fai stares hard at the dip in firelit throat, not daring to let his eyes slip higher as his pulse soars away from him, for no reason more than the ghost of those bones rasping through heavy linen with every turn.

Kurogane tugs the part of his collar further, slid easily across his shoulder without a single touch of calloused skin—still, the barest hint is enough to leave Fai’s skin quivering, throat bobbing hard as heavy sleeve is dragged slow down bicep, elbow, lifted careful over the start of wrapped bandages. He slides his hand from its cuff numbly, and has to chain his thoughts with nauseating strength when empty fabric is tossed careless to hang limp at his side, a dangerous suggestion for what impatient hands and moonlit forests and dying firelight could become—

( _It’s nothing it’s nothing it’s nothing_ —)

The split of cloth from skin stings, same as the first time, as the bandage is peeled slow from drying mush and dampened skin. Kurogane flicks the line of root away in soft brushes of fingertip and nail, eyes steady as an arrow notched.

“Looks better,” he says, a stiff confirmation to himself more than anything, the loosening of his brow a subtle thing. Fai tries to forget what that smallest ping of relief does to him, cheeks tingling strangely.

“I can wash it—” he blurts, at last.

“S’fine,” mutters Kurogane, and squeezes a stream of riverwater from their sack upon bloodstained cloth.

Fai follows the line of each splatter with lungs already tense in anticipation; a paid roof had given them the luxury of kitchen fires and boiling pots, heat able to sooth even through the sting—the bite of icewater, in comparison, burns with another thing entirely as soaked cloth is wringed out slow upon the curve of split flesh, and he gnaws firm upon his cheeks to hold back a shout as its cold shoots through his veins, sharp as steel.

Kurogane keeps the jolt of his hand still with the squeeze of one thumb over the meat of his own, cloth lowered slow to clean the tremor of his skin; he keeps it there, laid heavy beneath the weight of his palm, its heat a slow thing as it seeps down through it. Fai squints one eye open, and then slowly the other, caught upon the breadth of wide palm and ridged knuckle and long finger over wet cloth and fair skin.

“It’s all we got,” the man before him says, in lieu of an apology. Ruddish eyes flick towards the bandages latticed at his chest, mouth ticking at one side. “That one’ll be worse.”

Fai scowls, despite himself, at just the warning, the wrinkle of his lips pulling ebony lashes crinkling beneath the twitch of dark brows, and Kurogane scoffs out something close enough to be a chuckle as he tears free one strip of gauze, beginning the spiral steady between wet fingers.

“Don’t build it up that much,” he says, the rasp of cloth wrapping slow from elbow to wrist. “I told you before—you’re lucky. I’ve seen more than one drop dead from things worse than that. Almost came close a few times, myself.”

To even fathom this man lying half-dead upon a battlefield is an image Fai can hardly form, the wrinkle in his brow an unspoken _You?_ as blue eyes flick from bared collar to blinking lash. Kurogane glances up at him, the callous of one finger a soft thing as it drags out from where bandage is folded, and Fai can do nothing but sit rigid and breathless as he leans back, unprompted, to work the buttons of his own shirt open beneath the twist of one hand, the bends of collarbone, sternum, rib bared to the flicker of firelight. Dark fingers tug the V of his collar further, until crossing the ridge of one stripe of white, cut clean down the curve where shoulder and pectoral meet, dragged sharp to the first ripple of oblique.

“Got cut here, during a raid,” Kurogane explains, “Took months to close up.” The bend of his lapel is yanked further to bare a knot of twisted flesh, just below the intersection of collar and shoulder. “Poisoned arrow. Fell into a fever from it, hallucinated for days. If the _miko_ didn’t have a remedy, I wouldn’t’ve come out of it.” Fai follows the curl of those fingers as sleeve cuff is yanked higher, nonchalant, to shove over the bend of his elbow; he marvels, half-morbidly, at the crescent of indented white that spill down the ridges of bicep and forearm.

“Gods—what’d you do, come across a bear?” he teases, half-laughed, though the itch to see, feel, _touch_ sends more than one nervous shiver rippling down his spine. Kurogane quirks a dark brow, mouth twitching at a slant just wide enough to bare teeth as he looks away, pressing out the ghost of a chuckle, and then back up.

“A wolf,” he counters, and Fai’s lashes are sent into a startled flutter as that broad arm is turned, fingers flexed slow to a fist. “We ran across four of them, during a pilgrimage to the North. First one got an arrow through the neck. The others just…circled. Two behind us, one in front. I had my sword drawn, but one decided to lunge, and…” That fist unfurls, turning absent as memory is retraced, and Fai lands, ponderish, upon the faded stripe of white that cuts through bone and palm, eyes jerking quick from the pearlish gleam of it to downturned red. “Almost had the fucking thing torn off, but…wrestled it off, finally got them all to run.” Dark lashes blink in something faraway, sharpened still, as though caught up in the oddness of it all for the first night of many, a fierce delicateness that leaves Fai’s breath bated and stomach twisting as he stares silent and still upon him.

“Weird little trophy to carry, ain’t it?” Kurogane mutters then, and tugs his sleeve down.

Fai, for all his wreckless, stupid wit, struggles to get a single word out as a smile stretches helpless upon him. The man before him retreats into odd silence, gaze flickering from starlit blue to bandaged sternum before scattering down, torn away with the rattle of his throat; its an unspoken shift back to the present when his hands return, steady as anything, as though nothing had been said at all, to unravel the first corner of tethered bandaging. Fai swallows as loosened wraps falls into a curling heap, tugged swift and soft from its caress on his waist, and he watches, muscles already tense with dread, as stained cloth is wrung out and rewetted, moving to hover still about the stutter of his ribs.

Ember eyes raise up to his, an unspoken _Okay?_ , and Fai nods short and quick, teeth clenching firm as soon as its cold lowers to him. The rush of water spills sharper, stings deeper, and he can’t bite down the grit of breath that tears from him, head snapping away and fingertips digging hard into the meat of his thighs.

“Breathe,” murmurs Kurogane, roughened in its haste; Fai spits the air from his lungs in a hiss snakish as it is rumbling, brows knitted tight and cheek bitten firm as the cloth is dragged slow over the line of split flesh. The man before him nods in a silent _Good_ , keeps the press of calloused fingers steady in a wordless _Stay still_ as cloth is pulled away and gauze is unrolled, and through the dizziness of pain and touch alike, Fai says nothing, just breathes, eyes squeezed shut through the first whispering drag of knuckle and thumb.

It’s too easy to forget where he is, _why_ —his mind circles endless between rustling flame, silent breath, rasping cotton, calloused skin—and it is only when the sting of his teeth knifing into his lip dampens to sudden stillness and unearthly quiet that he cracks his eyes open, blinks hazily into the dark. He sees the shadows of bared breast and the gleam of light on dark sternum and the slow swallow of broad throat, eyes staggering quick to parted mouth, darkened red.

Never, in all his years, had he dared to picture the man before him flustering—but Kurogane does, like a child caught with a hand in a candy jar, eyes yanked down and shoulders turned rigid as his hands go back to work, quick as his steadiness will allow.

Fai, like a marvelous, damned _fool_ , makes some ungodly squeak, swallowed down into an ugly snort, and _stares_.

( _Fuck_.)

Its with the barest hint of self-consciousness that Kurogane clears his throat again, finishes the folds of bandaging neatly, his touch fast as a snakebite to retreat to bobbing knee and spread thigh.

“Well, uh,” he starts, mouth shifting awkwardly. “Should hold up enough.”

“Right,” breathes Fai, after some pause, throat abruptly tight.

Bloodish eyes dart upon his own, flicker fast back to the floor, and with scarred palm lifting to scrub across the back of his neck, Kurogane stands, folding bloodied cloth with him. Composure is a slow thing to return, slipped deeper across broad shoulders with every step that stalks from abandoned crate to opened doorway; Fai watches, in dazed stillness, as rough fingers tug the door half-closed behind him, his body a haunting shadow beneath the firelight as he pads between the snores of sleeping children to muddle through their rucksacks. He emerges through the dark with a roll of heavy wools, the door creaked faint around the bend of his frame.

“Here,” he says, rumbling soft in its quiet as he thumps blanket to crate. “May as well sleep here; you’ll wake those two, otherwise.”

Fai works his arm through his sleeve slowly, fingers a listless weight where they lift to slide clasps closed. The words come to him muddled, eyes blinking quick as he rights his head on his shoulders, some semblance of control.

“Right,” he says again, “That’s—that’s fine.”

The floor prickles with numb weight as he pushes himself to his feet, quick to keep his eyes anywhere but the steady heat that lingers upon him; they land, instead, on the curl of one scarred palm beneath the lip of dark pants pocket, the other clenching light about the discarded heap of ebon cloak. Kurogane moves to the threshold, painted black and gold through its light as he pauses, waits. Fai blinks full at him then, frozen from half-pressed heel clear to the fade of raven hair down a tanned neck, helpless to the tremor that lingers, aches, _begs_ within him—

“Do you want me to stay?”

It comes like the first crack of a storm, bark chipping to ash beneath the weight of it as the gleam of the fire before him whispers through the silence. But Kurogane lays the offer between them quietly, matter-of-fact—as if it’s something that shouldn’t require any thought; as if it’s nothing at all.

Fai stares at him as though he’s dismantled Hell at his feet.

His breath rattles through the quiet, eyes drawn wide. The man before him waits, head tilted just enough, as though to capture any possible answer that could be given. Silence turns suffocating, the weight of his boots drowning him like lead through water, and it’s the first twitch of sharp jaw, the slight rock into half-formed step that pulls his tongue stumbling.

“You can—” It’s a gasp, choked out, like a great secret unhinged. Fai stares, breathless, at the curl of broad fingers beneath dark linen, the turn of ruddish eyes towards his own, boyish and strange and _hopeful_. “Y-You can stay.”

It’s the length of a heartbeat, the air drawn thin as a bowstring, before Kurogane swallows, deafening in the stillness.

“You sure?” he rumbles, and there’s something tentative about it, gritting soft beneath the slight curl of dusk lips, the raise of one brow.

“I-I mean, just—just to sleep,” Fai babbles, stone hushing beneath the scuffle of his boots as he folds his arms upon himself, toys one finger through the hair at his nape, gestures oddly to the bedside. “Because of, ah—of the cold.”

Kurogane’s eyes linger on him, still, like the pinpoint of twin flames, their heat enough to send his skin prickling.

“Alright,” he says then, and its warmth is an unexpected thing, something like a smirk playing at the curl of his mouth.

“Alright,” parrots Fai, his own smile stretching wide and blinding. Without any sense of sane direction, he paces stiffly to the bedside to fumble at the straw, trying with every shred of composure in his being to keep the thunder of his pulse at bay.

It’s only the span of a breath before the door clicks shut. The sound alone is enough to leave his knees weak.

:|:

Their wools are laid flat beneath them, a makeshift sheet.

Fair hands tug out one corner, about as helpful as a disobedient child given a chore. His eyes linger, more than once, upon the clench of muscle that cords into scar-speckled arms as blanket is smoothed out on each end, quick to sweep, untethered, to the open drape of unbuttoned linen and the flex of dark flesh beneath.

It’s with some effort that Fai tears his eyes away, chained firm to the shadows that twist along stone walls. He sits on the bedside stiffly, throat bobbing quick, and if Kurogane notices any of it, the man says nothing; his shadow melts from one side of the room to the other, bending down to gather one great cloak from its puddle upon the floor, then shaking out the folds of his own. He returns, unhurried—each step slithering beneath Fai’s skin like the whisper of a ticking clock, drawing the ripple of his throat tighter—to cast each cloak into a heavy heap over the ridge of barren footboard.

“The kids will probably want to sleep in, won’t they?” Fai says, needing something, _anything_ , to distract from the silence. He reaches up to cord a hand through his hair, throat cleared soft through a cough as the clump of one boot falling to the floor echoes with the other, the straw creaking beneath the weight of broad hips.

“Mn,” hums Kurogane. Gold lashes blink through the darkness as the fiture of callouses on cheek and jaw scrub through the quiet, breath rattling from the man in a thin stream; even with his lungs sculpted to knots, it hits Fai then, that he is _tired_ , and nothing else—to work himself up over so little, so _quickly_ ( _Just to sleep_ ), seemed foolish as anything.

Still, his cheeks burn, and his spine stays rigid, even as the roll of that breathtaking body to the flat of his back is felt beside him. Kurogane drags one hand through tousled hair, looking still upon the flicker of dying gaslamp; it’s a good moment before the heat of his gaze shifts to the side, breath coming low through the dark.

“You gonna lay down?” he mutters, and the quiet of it does something vicious to Fai’s being—he jerks into movement half-mindedly, his own boots shucked, rolling quick to his side, and with fumbling fingers yanks the cloak closest to him over the bend of his shoulder. It’s not _his_ , he realizes, though the recognition comes a breath too late—the scent of skin and snow and pine carries a musk too warm to be his own, its scent twisting through his lungs with the heat of something his mind had only recently begin to lock away into hidden drawers, soil and spice and the taste of male left behind in clothes already worn—and that alone is enough to send his pulse collapsing all over again.

The man beside him follows his lead, creaking to his own side with drawn breath. Cramming into such a small space with so towering a build no doubt proves a difficult task, and even with the illusion of separation carved between them, the heat of that broad back still bleeds towards the length of Fai’s own, close as it is. The dying hush of their lamp into a final hiss of smoke sends darkness closing in upon them, and with it, he loses any sense of time; it could have been minutes, hours—the passive cycle of breath beside him sits unchanged, a poor marker for any shift of the hidden moon beyond them—and through it all he stares silent, lays rigid, breathes slow.

“You alright?” rumbles Kurogane, the suddenness of its grit coming soft through the stillness. Fai’s shoulders flinch with the stutter of his pulse, eyes blinking quick into the dark.

“I’m fine,” he breathes, and swallows the lump in his throat. His fingers curl into the rasp of wool beneath, thumb catching firm on its folds. “It’s just…um…it’s fine—”

“Just what?”

He can feel the roll of heavy shoulders into the straw beneath, feel the flicker of warmth glance just enough upon the side of his cheek. Fai pulls fair lashes closed, teeth clenching slow.

“Just…” he whispers, and swallows again, “It’s…been a while.”

The heat of that man’s gaze lays on him still, time itself a broken thing.

“Since what?” Kurogane continues then, quietly, and the gentle prod of it is enough to tear a laugh bitter as it is begging from Fai’s mouth. He shakes his head, a quick thing, and it’s a long pause, brow drawn tight, before he admits, “Anything.” Its rasp comes too honest, with so little space between them.

There’s a terrifying, frozen moment of nothing—Fai’s heart jumping to his throat, mind pounding beneath his skull ( _Idiot idiot idiot_ ), fingers whitening upon their wools—before the grate of cloth and straw alike roll beneath his side, careful as a spy treading foothills unseen. Starlit eyes stutter wide, breath caught behind his teeth as the heat of that body turns, from distanced breadth to molten _closeness_ ; one chiseled arm folds beneath the press of dark temple, a broad knee stuttering into the back of his thigh, accidental, at first, and then deliberate in its silence. Fai freezes, pulse thundering between his ears as knuckles rasp against the sliver of wool between them, as if caught in their own hesitance, before their touch ghosts around the curve of his waist, hovering upon the wrinkle of his shirttails before calloused palm limpens to splay slow into the cloth below them, the wrap of his arm falling soft as cotton beneath the wind.

Fai lays, tight as a bowstring, for one aching, panicked moment, in nothing but the swarm of this thoughts, shoulders drawn still as stone.

“What,” he croaks, at last, dragged from dry lips like sand from parched earth, “What are you—?”

“S’alright,” husks Kurogane, and the quiet calm of it washes down tightened shoulders like rain, like thunder, like the first scent of summer mist on a cool morning. “Just…go to sleep.”

Fai forces a shudder of breath down his throat, blinking fast through the dim light. He stares at the wall, at the weathered post of the bedframe, at the lax curl of dark fingers just a touch away from where his own cling tight within the tremor of his chest.

It’s not fair. None of it is fucking _fair_ —the knowing of his own betrayal, the threat of the future he had for so long painted for himself, twists between his ribs in a gnawing, blistering tear. None of them were supposed to care; _he_ wasn’t supposed to care, not for any of them—not for the stubborn boy, or the resolute girl, or the creature who had been planted so keenly into his path by the Witch, and least of all for the man (his _enemy_ ), who, with a single motion, had dismantled every fear he had constructed within himself; who, with one look, one movement, had placed a shield around him, through nothing but bare hand alone, not having to spare a single question for _why_.

The quiver of Fai’s throat as it swallows through gritting jaw is a desperate thing, following every tremble of his bones as it slithers down aching chest, knotted stomach.

(He _can’t_. He can’t, he can’t, _he can’t_ —)

Yet that heat stays close, an unspoken _You can_ , and its permission is enough to send the cage of his very being crumbling.

He lets himself melt—a violent, tense mess of held breath, pounding pulse—but the first touch of bared collarbone upon the the start of covered spine is like the swallowing of a spell across his skin, shiver rippling from head to toe at the heat that envelops him; it starts at the first sigh of steam breathed upon his neck, drips down every inch of his back as his body shifts closer, flush from shoulder to hip. Kurogane keeps his arm still through the slow twist of it, waits until the hitch in frozen breath falls quiet before muscle and bone lower to lay warm over the dip of thin waist, knee nudging faint between the part of Fai’s own to leave no space between them.

It feels like the first caress of sunlight after a storm; like the cradle of a mother over a child; like the curl of a dragon around gold, searing and gentle and possessive all at once. Beneath the weight of it, Fai’s pulse stutters into a thawed flutter, breath turned liquid and slow; he clenches his eyes shut, mouth pressed firm against the flicker of defiance that burns beneath his chest, even with the jitter of any possible repercussion lingering still in his bones.

But that fear fades, slow as poison from a wound, the longer he lays. It burns to dying light beneath the heat of muscle, breath, pulse rising and falling steady against his back; dissolves to nothingness with every simmer of air against his nape; vanishes entirely when raven strands tickle through his own, forehead and loosened brow and sharp nose tilting to press, sleepish and soft, into the dip of his skull.

Fai can’t remember when he falls asleep. Warmth is the only thing that greets him.

:|:

Dawn comes muted beneath the door, a faint bleed of grayish light. It’s not the haze that wakes him, but the snoring, rumbling quiet through the stillness that early morning leaves.

Fai drags in a breath slow, hitching sharp through his nostrils as his brow twitches. Linen scratches against his cheek and heat prickles against his nose, his hair tangled in an itching mess as sensation comes back to him, quick as the breaking of a dam. He blinks his eyes open, groggily, to muted brown; nerve endings tingle into consciousness, a thousand at once, of wrinkled clothing, stiff shoulder, cold toes, stinging ribs. He shifts one thigh numbly, weighed down beneath heavy heat, and then twitches the other, the cloth of his pants wrinkled above his knee where it rasps against the grit of another. His fingers tingle slow to feeling, curling slight into his palms, wrists flexing the tension from themselves half-consciously, and it’s the stutter of scarred fingertips upon the swelling breath of broad skin that turns his blood cold.

Fair lashes jolt open. The shadows of muted light do little to aid him, but it’s clear, nonetheless, that he’s staring at tilted neck, bared throat, unbuttoned shirt rather than stone wall. The curse that spills up his tongue shatters like glass, quick to be wrestled down as his head jerks up, but still, the motion is enough; the body before him puffs out the start of a half-groan, head turning to nuzzle deeper into curled arm, fingers twitching where they lay like sunspots upon the small of Fai’s back.

It’s a slow thing, watching consciousness bleed into that face; Fai stares, motionless, as the furrow that curls raven brows softens, mulling lips laxing into a wet part. It’s strange, seeing such sharp features laid like gossamer, fragile in their vulnerability; the sight alone is enough to pull Fai’s brow wrinkling, awed and transfixed at once. The moment only lasts for the rise and fall of another deep breath, the changing light or loss of heat a shared push to leave dreams abandoned; Kurogane drags the knee between Fai’s own slow into the sheets, jolting him under the press of it as a bare foot flees the cover of heavy cloaks to splay into a long stretch. The roll of his spine comes next, starting with the creak of arching hips and spilling into the crackling of spread shoulders, the broad palm at Fai’s back slipping clumsy and hot over the arch of his hip to thwump to the swell of bared skin, fumbling slow to rub across gritting jaw, tightened eyes.

Kurogane turns, giant and careless and breath rustling, like a great beast awakening; the slump of his back to their wools follows the knock of right fingers kneading the sleep slow from his eyes, the stretch of his left coming languid and numb where his arm curls by his head. His knee jerks up as his other leg stiffens into a stretch, throwing Fai forward with a yelp barely held as his own knees bruise into the straw beneath, palms clapping quick above them to steady himself from losing balance entirely. The arch of broad chest sends the V of unbuttoned cloth straining farther, its part draping off-kilter over the ripple of muscle below swelling ribs, the ring of dusk-pink above, the juncture of shoulder to neck that rolls back, throat rippling slow into a rumbled swallow as weathered fingertips rasp over raising lash, slipping just slight into dark hairline.

Fai can’t breathe, can’t _think_ , can’t say a word as bloodish eyes adjust gradually to the dark, blinking slow upon him beneath the drape of his palm. Half-awake as he is, it takes nothing for his mental state to plummet even further—it would be easy, _so_ easy, to send fair fingers smoothing over that bared muscle, to do as his fate had so long commanded him and slide clean around that dark neck; and far, far too easy to let his palms scrape greedy down, instead, to tear open the rest of linen buttons, teased over every swell of hitching abdomen and curling under the waistband beneath.

“You okay?” comes a rough murmur, hoarse with a husk of sleep that sounds soft as it does lethal. The shiver that slithers down Fai’s neck fizzles into white noise, and he blinks helpless upon the way ruddy eyes track down from parted mouth, parted collar, parted thighs, the bloom of ember to black-brown hitting him like a punch to the gut. His cheeks burn, throat gritting like sandpaper through the swallow he forces down.

“I’m—yes,” Fai rasps, brain broken and tongue numb. “I’m—I’m fine—”

The shift of the knee caught beneath him is enough, slight as it is, to pull him off-balance; one palm digs firm into their wools for leverage, the other jolting from its landing beneath bared sternum to just a hover of fingertips. Kurogane leans into the weight of one elbow beneath him, rises just enough to the send the heat of that skin closer beneath his palm; Fai jerks his hand up, eyes blinking wide to the head that tilts closer to him.

Darkened eyes study him slow, like a predator sizing up prey, and the action alone is enough to send his breath shuddering, cheeks hot beneath the voiceless rattle of it; he watches, motionless, as scarred palm moves slow to find the drape of his sleeve, fingers circling about the willowy line of his wrist to let thumb press gentle over bandaged tendon. His hand is pulled slowly, molten touch a guiding nudge to let scarred fingertips scatter over the dip of bared sternum; the press of roughened fingers turns firmer, just enough, to let fair hand slide lower, and Fai drags down a hard swallow as his palm sinks flush to the valley of warm skin, fingers spreading wide against the touch of it.

“Do you want this?” breathes Kurogane, deep and roughened and light all at once. The intensity of ember eyes bleeds beneath Fai’s linens, cuts straight into his very being, as if there was nothing left between them, at all.

He lets his hand be guided further, for nothing more than his own quivering greed, to trace the heat of muscle over pounding breast, the line of parted collar rasping slow to wrinkle around his wrist as his palm moves, of its own accord, to trace the dip of collarbone and curl about the junction between neck and shoulder, thumb a shivery hover over the pulse that drums down bobbing throat.

He wants to scream _Yes_. It hangs on the tip of his tongue, lingers just behind his mouth as he swallows through parted lips, and the gleam of that gaze is close enough to burn, angled with the tilt of sharp jaw as those shoulders bend forward, just enough, to let scarred fingertips and nail curl down the line of hot muscle; the soft, needy scrape of it pulls dusk lips twitching to bare teeth, midnight lashes hanging low over blackened eyes, and Fai is trapped within their flame, powerless to the way his tousled fringe spills into a pool of gold across his cheeks, tangling with the bed-headed mess of raven strands that slick like ink across dark brow as that head is tilted up, _up_ —

“I—” gasps Fai, a rush of heat through the mingling breath that gathers between the brush of their lips. “I-I should—check on the kids—” His palm tears from hot skin in dizzying speed, head jerking back with cheeks stinging. “We should—we shouldn’t—” he babbles, breathless still, as he struggles to untangle his legs from parted nest of thighs below him. “Um—”

Fai stumbles to his feet, the musk of half-fallen velvet stripped fully from him, and for one heart-staggering minute, he stops—the man before him looks like a wild creature left before a kill, motionless and dazed and fuck fuck _fuck_ —before he staggers into motion, nearly walking half-blind into the doorway, and flees.

:|:

He doesn’t check on the kids. He doesn’t stop for _anything_. His steps weave him, barefooted, into a beeline for an escape route; anything, anywhere, to put distance between them.

His heart is pounding in his throat and his stomach quivering in his toes as he bursts out of a broken-hinged back door, the tiny roofing just enough to provide cover from the snowfall that spills still beyond the warbled deck. It’s no doubt they may be trapped for hours—days, even—but any worry for their travels is squashed beneath the pace of his heels upon faded wood, eyes darting frantic to anything save the door behind him.

“Fuck,” he hisses, under his breath, and curls his hands tight to fists. “ _Fuck_.”

He’s too far gone, too _ruined_ —there’s nothing he can fathom to pull him from a grave dug ten feet deep, and the anxious burn of it pulls him crumbling to the floorboards, knees curled and nails scraping to his scalp and eyes burning tired and pained and _furious_.

(None was it was fucking _fair_.)

He sits in silence for a long moment, breath coming tense and white from him, trying with all his might to orchestrate a grand scheme to slot himself back to normal within the whole of them. The answer never has the chance to form, the gradual creaking of the door left behind him sending his lashes sinking shut in dread, and he swallows down a nervous itch in his throat as a shadow of black legs blur into his peripheral.

“Those two’re still sleepin’,” murmurs a voice Fai has no and every desire to hear, brow wrinkling tight through the soft gruff of sleep still within it. He blinks slow into the snowfield beyond them, drags a quivering breath between the slits of his teeth. The man beside him hesitates, hands shifting beneath his pockets. “If you…if you don’t wanna talk, that’s fine,” Kurogane continues, throat cleared rough into something closer to his normal burr, and Fai shakes his head quick, fingers clenched firm into fists.

“It’s not—” he starts, a helpless sigh. “I— _gods_ , I can’t do this. If I do, I just—I _can’t_ —”

“Oi,” Kurogane huffs, and even without looking, Fai can hear the curl that strings between his brow, see the tension that lines his mouth as broad body lowers onto the floorboards, hands slipping out to lay over spread knees.

“I can’t be—I can’t be _wanting_ this, I can’t be doing _any_ of this—but here I am, and—and every time—every time I do this shit, it’s the same, and I _can’t_ —”

“ _Oi_.” It’s the brush of one warm knuckle beneath the quiver of his chin that pulls his eyes startling towards him, dark brows furrowed low and eyes steady as dragonflame where they linger over him. Kurogane watches him for a long moment, blue eyes loosening wide beneath the knit of wrinkled skin. “What are you so afraid of?” he murmurs then, and it’s with a soft touch that the ridges of his thumb move to brush over a tightened jaw, Fai’s head jerking down through the caress of it.

He shakes his head, mouth twisted into a sneer; part of him wants to lay everything between them, put every lie and every manipulation and every curse flat into view, leave the mask broken and damn all the rest, because he’s _tired_ , he’s just—

“This,” Fai chuckles, vicious and bitter, and stares cold away. His voice slips into a whisper then, hoarse as it is aching. “All of it.”

Kurogane stares at him, silent, only the slow heave of his breath weaving between them. He looks gradually from tightened lips to eyes sharp as glass, the twitch in his mouth deepening before he brushes his thumb over the hollow of fair cheek, a subtle nudge of palm and finger to draw pale eyes towards him.

“I don’t give a damn what you can and can’t do,” he mutters then, and its roughness comes sharp, enough of a bite to send blonde brows unfurling and blue eyes blinking wide. “What matters is what you _want_. And if you want to mean something to those kids, if you want to be something more than whatever you’ve chained yourself down to be, you have the power to decide that for yourself. I don’t care what you choose for them, or the _manjuu_ , or me; you need to choose what _you_ want.”

Fai looks at him, frozen, as though the option to choose life over death had been painted before his feet for the first time.

(He wonders, numbly, if it would be worth it.)

“So, what do you want?” Kurogane thunders on, eyes piercing as a blade drawn. Fai stares at him with heart in his lungs and speech abandoned, hands twitching faint upon his knees.

“…All of it,” he whispers, a croaking confession, and smiles small with it, a timid, shaking thing. The rasp of a calloused thumb lingers still upon his cheek, brushing a tangled wisp of white gold behind the shell of his ear, and Fai’s eyes jerk away with the shiver of it, lips bitten shut.

“Wouldn’t be afraid of it unless it meant something, right?” says Kurogane, sharp as it is gentle, and that alone is enough to draw eyes bright as moonstone upon him. Pinkish mouth parts to a quivering sigh as roughened thumb drags soft down to brush the corner of it, and Fai blinks through the stillness, caught upon the the limp weight of one tanned hand upon spread knee; the open collar that still hangs, half-tidied, despite the cold; the steady heat of bloody-brown eyes.

His heart tremors, aches, _roars_ —and he pushes himself closer, hand coming to lean upon the warped prickle of wood beneath, and closer still, weathered thumb still hanging soft upon his chin, until the husk of Kurogane’s breath fans quick against his own, and by then, Fai is gone.

It’s a feeble, wavering thing as he closes the distance between them, head tilted further into that calloused touch as noses bump, parted mouths meet; but the taste of Kurogane’s lips is like the first hit of a drug—warm, and wet, and earth, and rain—and Fai lingers in it as long as he can, skin shiverish beneath the drag of parting skin.

His eyes flutter open slowly, breath bated as he blinks at the rise of midnight lashes, the gleam of ember beneath. He swallows hard, stolen and chained and _free_ at once, and with other palm chasing down to find the ridge of spread knee, scattering quick over curves of dark knuckle and wrist to squeeze over rolling forearm, he _dives_.

Kurogane welcomes him in like man starved, like he is life itself, the catch of their lips turned wild, claiming, _raw_ —scarred palm dives easily over the dip of his nape as Fai fumbles closer, fair fingers climbing over wrinkled sleeve as his thighs skitter over the spread of Kurogane’s own; the heat of heavy palm follows the line of it easily, rough fingers bracing firm into the crook of hipbone and thigh, fingers biting deep into the meat of his flank as thumb traces soft into the shiver of muscle beneath.

Fai murmurs something incoherent and sighing and desperate into the breathless part of their lips ( _please please please_ ), and the sound alone is enough to leave Kurogane growling, scarred palm clawing from nape to spine to drag soft over the bare skin that peeks beneath loosened collar. The touch comes electric, a sizzling spark of heat, and Fai grits out a hoarse pant as his mouth slips wetly away. Even through dizzied breathlessness, his hands move in a flurry, bleeding down pounding neck and swallowing throat to slide into the ripple of bare skin beneath; the touch earns him a rumbling groan, muffled low into the dip of his own neck, that turns to scattered breath through one molten kiss, pressed warm to the pound of pulsing tendon, then searing lick of tongue, and Fai has to claw fingers firm to the heat of broad neck to stay upright through the shuddering gasp of it.

It’s a mess of knee clunking to the floorboards, then thwumping elbow, then palm—by some unseen grace, neither of them collapse altogether—but Fai is breathless and shiverish and heart pounding as that mouth weaves a string of kisses from neck to ear to cheek, the rustle of Kurogane’s panting coming warm and heavy across his jaw before his lips turns into his again, and Fai lets the quiver of a purr slip muffled and unabashed into the heat of them as his fingers chase deeper beneath the folds of dark collar.

The downfall comes slow, the need for air a violent thing. It’s Kurogane who parts first, albeit reluctantly, the break of their kiss a lingering, gentle caress; auburn eyes flutter open to fair skin stained pink and bluish eyes gleaming sapphire, dark throat stumbling through a heavy swallow as Fai drags in a shaky breath.

The smile that curls his lips starts bashfully, dimpling reddened cheeks with a boyishness enough to make even Kurogane’s skin color, but it unfurls into one bright, and breathless, and _free_.

“You—” Fai gasps, and dissolves into a chuckle, soft as it is disbelieving as his head puddles into a flutter of shaking fringe.

“Wh—” Kurogane croaks, and then does flush red, throat clearing quick, “What?”

Crystalline eyes land upon him, bright and unabashed in their awe, and Fai smiles, crooked and soft and with head tilting.

“Nothing,” he whispers, because any variation of _Why_ , _How_ , _Thank you_ , feels too flat to put into words. The man beneath him just quirks one dark brow, lips curling at smirk.

“Nothing?” Kurogane echoes, deadpanned. It’s with some show of dramatics that Fai sends his shoulders swooping, cuts his eyes above them, breath huffing exasperated and short.

“Just—gods, _shut_ _up_ ,” he crows, and grins.

It’s easy as anything when Kurogane smooths one hand over the small of his back, tugs his smile down close enough to press into the slant of his own, and does.

**Author's Note:**

> to no surprise, i made [an entire playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3kW4hzdxnPEY8EpkJlHsGP) while writing this, but no song carried more weight with it than bon iver’s ‘heavenly father,’ which the title pulls direct inspiration from (you can listen to the original [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ib_disDW_AQ), or hear a few hauntingly beautiful acoustic renditions [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAoADCSpD-8) and [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZX5rKg_taM0); the latter was the first I discovered, and remains a personal favorite).
> 
> it's been an absolute whirlwind of spending near-entire days drilling this out, but i loved writing every moment of it; it has been a long time since i've given myself the time to just pour into the keyboard, and being able to do so was a clear reminder for how much i've missed doing so.
> 
> if you made it through the whole thing, i cannot give you enough thanks. i'd love to hear what you liked, or if anything stuck with you!


End file.
